Mariana Castro

Mariana Castro is a researcher and educational leader focused on the education of multilingual learners, based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She serves as Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) and is a leader and researcher with WIDA, an initiative dedicated to advancing the academic achievement of multilingual learners. Castro holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has worked as a science teacher, ESL and bilingual educator and administrator, teacher educator, and qualitative researcher, with a focus on the intersection of policy and practice in multilingual education.

Castro is the coauthor, with Margo Gottlieb, of Language Power: Key Uses for Accessing Content, which introduces a framework for integrating academic language and content learning for K–8 students. Her publications also include WIDA-focused resources such as work on translanguaging and multiliteracies in bilingual classrooms, as well as the Language-Integrated Framework for Teaching (LIFT), which aligns language supports with core teaching practices to improve access to rigorous curricula for multilingual learners.